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GM Farooq Portelli and Mayor Ned Mannoun in happier times
If you choose to live by the sword, you die by the sword. What a great biblical reference (Matthew 26:52, if you would like to check) and one where Wikipedia helpfully provides a non-literal interpretation, “if you use violence, or other harsh means, against other people, you can expect to have those same means used against you.”
So, true to those ancient words, no one should have been too surprised to see the Liverpool GM get Farooqed himself.
As a reminder, it was only in 2012/13 that the local government unions were brawling with Liverpool City Council over their plan to spill their director and manager jobs, make some people redundant and employ the new second and third levels of management as senior staff under the Local Government Act on the dreadful statutory senior staff contract. Easier to sack people that way.
During the course of the dispute, Liverpool Mayor Councillor Ned Mannoun confessed at a UDIA breakfast that they didn’t want to waste time performance managing duds out of the place, because “that can take up to 18 months”, so putting people on the term contract mandated by the DLG meant they could just get rid of people whenever they wanted, without even having to explain why and the payout to sack GMs not performing badly is only 38 weeks’ pay.
Regrettably, a timid Judge of the IRC rejected our request to require the Mayor to come and say those same things in the Commission as part of the proceedings in the dispute. After all, GM Portelli hadn’t been game enough to confess what we all knew to be true.
We last covered developments at Liverpool in our March 2013 issue (which included the picture of the GM and the Mayor above) but things didn’t really go too well for Farooq after that. Running battles with the councillors followed for the remainder of the year and the Mayor tried unsuccessfully to sack him in December.
Rumours were flying in early March and on 1 April the Sydney Morning Herald revealed all under the heading “Senior public servants sacked without explanation”.
You almost have to feel sorry for Farooq. His venal and punitive approach to setting up people on employment contracts who can be removed with no checks or balances created a dangerous precedent that would make more people vulnerable to unfair treatment - and his sacking by Liverpool made him the ninth GM sacked because of politics after the local government elections two years ago.
Former Labor Mayor Wendy Waller criticised the way things had gone and said “the Mayor basically gave a testimonial in regards to the general manager’s performance, yet it’s his mayoral minute that basically cancels the contract”.
“So I think “hypocritical” is the only word I see as being appropriate.”
Karma is a more appropriate word. If you use harsh means against others, expect them to happen to you.
You’ve dropped the Grange, Barry
The resignation of Premier Barry O’Farrell on 16 April took everyone by surprise. His resignation followed assurances to the ICAC the day before that he had not received a bottle of 1959 Grange from Liberal Party identity and Obeid connection, Nick Di Girolamo.
This, despite evidence presented to him that the wine had been bought, delivered to his house and shortly afterwards he had a short phone conversation on his private mobile phone with Mr Di Girolamo. He denied it, and he denied it strenuously and repeatedly.
But, as often happens in the theatre which is the ICAC, up pops a thank you letter in the Premier’s own fine fountain-penned hand thanking “Nick and Jodie” and signed “Baz and Rosemary”. Uh oh …
At least he had nice manners. His Mum should be proud.
There are lessons in this for employees in local government. There are no longer any secrets. People have ways of finding everything you would rather not found and doing so at precisely the wrong time.
While some are trivialising the circumstances of the resignation by claiming it was all about forgetting to declare a bottle of wine, it was much, much more than that.
Not just breaches of guidelines for ministers and politicians, not just the blurred line between what’s acceptable when you’re running for power and what’s acceptable when you’re in government, not just a failure to acknowledge phone calls nor the extent of relationships, and not just attempting to withhold information about meetings, their frequency and their purpose.
Then there was the unfortunate timeframe of the gift he can’t remember receiving with the Premier’s subsequent intervention over his Water Minister’s portfolio to look after a mate and benefactor and the subsequent revealing of his office taking steps to recommend Di Girolamo for a Government Board only two weeks after the gift was delivered and the thank you letter written.
In the end, it’s hard to get away with anything that is anything less than appropriate and proper and satisfies guidelines for governance and propriety. Don’t try it.
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Former Minister Don Page
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New Minister Paul Toole
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We are sorry to see the removal of Don Page as Minister for Local Government as part of the new Cabinet of Premier Mike Baird.
Far too many ministers for local government have come and gone over the years. Having presided over the current reviews into local government, it’s a pity Don Page couldn’t see the job through. All those outstanding recommendations demanded the continuity and commitment the previous Minister Don Page could provide.
He also seemed a decent bloke, accessible and understanding of local government and its issues and with capable and accessible staff as well.
Sorry to see you go, Don.
But welcome to the new Minister Paul Toole, member for Bathurst and another member of the National party.
At least he’s had some local government experience - even if it was only as a councillor and Mayor.
We will try to see the new Minister when things settle down and when it’s clear who will be supporting him in his Parliamentary Office. My great-grandparents are from Bathurst, so that should help opens doors. Hey bro!
Margaret, Bill and Shelley
The final, blundering and sad purge of the NSW office of the AIBS is complete. On 24 March the goths and vandals from the National Office waved goodbye to the remaining staff, bundled up some important stuff in boxes and shut the office for good.
NSW Chapter EO Bill Burns had worked for the AIBS for more than 20 years. Bill was a highly respected, admirable and decent bloke with a distinguished local government career and a long history as a member of the Committee of Management and President and of depa. Goodbye, Bill.
Administration Manager Margaret Bayliss had worked for the AIBS for 15 years and membership Officer Shelley Melville had worked for the AIBS for 12 years. Goodbye Margaret and Shelley.
Not just three good, faithful and reliable employees, but all that corporate knowledge lost in a federal takeover that will leave no familiar faces and no lasting relationship in the Pymple office with anyone from NSW.
More importantly, the power wielders in the Federal Office made no real attempt to explain what they were doing to members, who were left wondering as one-by-one, Margaret, Bill and Shelley disappeared.
Many members of ours are also members of the AIBS. We don’t really understand why, but they are, but they must really be wondering why they would bother now.
Don’t ask Bill, Margaret or Shelley because, as most of you will know, employees affected by the closing down of offices and businesses often end up with a Deed of Release which, amongst other things, pledges confidentiality and no disparagement.
Suffice to say, because Bill is a life member of depa, we provided access to our lawyers to assist in his exit, and advice to Margaret as well who, luckily for us, is now our Office Manager. It was messy, antagonistic and offensive, but it’s done.
You would have thought that NSW would have some influence on the Federal Executive, that the NSW representative would have gone in to bat for those three loyal employees but you would have been disappointed. He’s a diplomat, you see, in the grand Federal scheme of things. Peace in our time and all, that sort of diplomat.
So now NSW is just like the other states. No proportional representation (always a mistake when the BSI was first abandoned because the smart people in AIBS at the time thought you needed to be part of a federal body) will always mean that while NSW might have half the membership nationally, it gets the same vote as the Tasmanians.
And if that voter thinks his role means he has to be a diplomat and that, in turn only means appeasing the aggressors, then there is no hope.
Bill Margaret and Shelley all deserved a better departure.
If you don’t have the answer, copy from someone who does
For an organisation constantly boasting about their leadership to the industry, LGMA, or LGPA in its new disguise, is pretty short on original ideas. We don’t mind consenting adults getting together to pleasure themselves in a group, so we’ve always been bemused by the organisation that started representing the interests of town or shire clerks.
The Town Clerks Society, the Institute for Municipal Management, the Local Government Managers Association and now the Local Government Poseurs. Oops, while that might be more accurate, it really is Professionals.
It was never a good business model to be a little organisation covering Town or Shire Clerks (there were never going to be many of them) so it makes sense for them to keep expanding and sucking into their vortex more and more of the hapless and the gullible. Still, rubbing shoulders, or whatever part of the body you prefer, with the self-important and particularly the “leaders”, does provide a degree of pleasure associated with it.
When we changed our name from the Environmental Health and Building Surveyors Association to the Development and Environmental Professionals’’ Association in 2003, they should have woken up. The true leaders did it all back more than a decade ago. It’s hard to boast about being the leaders in the industry when you do something that we did 11 ½ years ago. Still, nice to know we influence them in some way.
Committed to parenthood statements like management excellence and all that stuff, the LGMA really needs to get its act together about what it is, and what it does.
We remember it most as the organisation responsible for lying back and thinking of the Empire and allowing their members to get well and truly rogered when they jointly developed the first statutory general managers and senior staff contract with the DLG and the LGSA.
This is the contract that prohibited the continuation of payment for untaken sick leave for anyone who had it (because they didn’t understand the provision in the Industrial Relations Act that does allow the continuation of payment for untaken sick leave other than in an industrial Award and took the advice of other people who didn’t know) and which famously thought it made sense to introduce a provision to allow the termination of good people by paying 38 weeks’ pay. What an achievement.
That meant that the concept of a standard contract, and its content, was developed by permanent bureaucrats in the DLG with all of the protections of the public sector and no expertise in industrial relations, the LGSA representing councillors (yes, the people who would employee general managers) and the IMM, purportedly representing the interests of people who would be employed under the contract but completely ignorant of employment law and industrial relations. Still, they were probably there representing management excellence.
The IMM always loved contracts, this was the first organisation that thought they should be introduced for general managers so that the status of the general manager would be better acknowledged. Wasn’t that fabulous vision and leadership! Nine GMs, with no performance problems at all, sacked in the last two years and with no protection or defence.
And when the standard contract came up for renewal through a working party, they sat there mute while the three unions argued to remove term employment for general managers and improve the capacity for bonuses and other flexibilities in remuneration. Even at the meeting that coincided with the unreasonable termination of a good GM at Camden, all they could say was that it’s unfortunate when their relationship problems between the GM and councillors. Unfortunate! The real leaders wanted to do something about it.
No interest at all in protecting senior staff as employees and, change their name as they might, no interest in in protecting professionals generally either.
And now they run HR conferences. Move on, nothing to learn here.
If they were really looking for a P word, there are plenty of better and more accurate options.
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In this issue
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Contact us
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